Phantom Scars
by Austin.Imaginativ3
Summary: ULC 26: Love and Loss, Apparitions. Every Starfleet Officer has to deal with scars and pains from years past, for every ship and crewman lost, there is always a hole left behind. Gregs has overcome his own fair share of pains, but what did he really suffer from, how did he lose control of himself, enough to warrant commitment to Elba II, and how did he manage to overcome himself?


_"Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars."_  
 _― Kahlil Gibran_

 _Risa_

The sounds of seabirds and the lapping of waves against the sands, calmed his restlessness. Gregs Sharvan Son'aire stood at the edge of his balcony, watching the Risan sunrise, while being buffeted by the soft wind that had suddenly come up. It was currently well before any sane person, besides of course another starship captain and their crew, would awaken normally, and odd for a person who was supposed to be on vacation to be awake at. Sipping a cooling drink, he watches birds tumble towards the sandbars and pick apart at the shelled organisms, who were taking refugee from the cruel pull of the undertow for the relative safety of sleep on land.

Suddenly hearing the bed move from behind him, he feels the soft touch of her hands meeting his, as she takes the steaming cup for her own. "Thank you," she says, "You shouldn't have made this yummy brew for me!" He laughs, then grabs the second cup hidden from behind a book, and exchanges the fuller and warmer one, for the one he had been drinking. "What's on your mind sailor?" Zinuzee asks, "Anxious to see the real thing live up to the drink?" He chuckles, and just takes another sip in response, collecting his thoughts.

"I believe everyone's probably up right now, in their own ways, especially because of last night and our 'surprise guest' and it got me thinking," Gregs says, "Couldn't sleep because of it, so I thought I would enjoy two beautiful views, before we try and reconcile everything today." Her curiosity was piqued.

"Two beautiful views?" she asked, "Don't tell me Risa has a fourth moon now..."

"Nope, the first great thing was watching the sunrise, the second, was getting to watch it with you next to me," he replies, leaning in for a kiss. Surprised momentarily, but going with it, the Trill woman has to stop him before they go any further, as she sees a spark of sadness in his eyes.

"I love you, I really do, but something is weighing on your mind," the Trill woman says, pulling away, "and I don't have to be a telepath to know it." Giving a rueful chuckle, Gregs realizes she wasn't going to take no for an answer.

"Right, well, after last night and seeing her there, I can't help but feel I am responsible for this, in my own way," Gregs says, "Because I did see the end of her life, or at least when it should have ended..."

Zinuzee stops and waits for him to go on. Sighing, Gregs takes her hands in his own. "Promise me, don't interrupt, this is my story to tell," he says, "This was when I was suffering from triolic radiation and after the failed attempt to reconcile the 'Other' me into my timeline, it all began..."

 _1 Week after the Events of 'Midnight'_

 _The_ Kh'Tar _in Orbit around Jupiter_

The hallway exploded, venting air until emergency force fields activated, six seconds too late to save Ensign Ramirez from being sucked into the blackness of space. Damage from the Iconian fleet had weakened structural integrity in this deck, and to repair damage to the bulkhead, Ramirez had offered to help ferry materials and tools between the engineering crews working tirelessly to fix what damage they could.

Earth Spacedock had barely managed to survive the final assault on Earth by T'Ket's forces, the Shipyards and _Defiant_ both lost, when Kurland rammed his ship into the _Iadon_ that had threatened to open an Oblivion Gateway above Earth's atmosphere, potentially burning away the protective layer. Jupiter Station and all hands intercepting it had fallen, when the ship had warped into range of Earth and the last resistance surrounding it.

Gregs merely watches the hole in space flicker as space debris hit the force field, and curses the fact he couldn't be quick enough, that he hadn't noticed the fracture forming due to the fact the sensors had been disabled because engineering had to shut down to minimal power and a skeleton crew.

"Sir," Gregs hears a voice say to him, "Sir?" Shaking his head to clear the ringing in his ears, to subdue the forming panic attack, he feels an arm touch his shoulder, bringing him back into reality. "Captain?" Ensign Ramirez asks, "I said Jupiter Station is requesting your authorization codes, Captain, the materials are accounted for, but they need your signature to show they made it here." Shaking, Gregs merely nods, remembering Ramirez hadn't died after the attack on Earth, Kurland was alive and piloting the _Defiant_ back to DS9, and his ship had been one of the first few repaired with the minimal damage he had received, easily fixable by the Shipyard they had helped save from the Iconian attack.

After Ramirez had left, Gregs decided to continue on to Ten Forward, where he had planned to announce his surprise to the crew. Moving pass the turbolift now, through the hallways and into Ten Forward, Gregs sees the from of Jupiter Station against the backdrop of Jupiter. Seeing his friends and family, who had come from their respective ships, as the Shipyards had been opened for all ships to effect repairs to the most damaged ships. Grabbing a flute glass of synthol of some form, Gregs walks toward the table under the giant transparent aluminum window, where Jupiter station was reaching it's peak viewing point between the ship and Jupiter.

As he was walking, he saw Jupiter waver for a moment, before his combadge chimed. "Captain," the voice of Ani'tara, the ships Romulan tactician calls over the channel, "We've picked up some kind of disturbance in Jupiter's orbit, some kind of device we picked up inside one of it's lower clouds has activated, and we believe it to have been left behind by a Herald ship or by T'Ket, it seems to be drawing hydrogen and other materials in Jupiter's atmosphere into it." The sound, the force, was felt before anything else, as suddenly a bright spot forms, rivaling the great Dark Spot, and exponentially growing. Ten Forward goes silent as eveyone turns to watch Jupiter's new acquisition, before the screaming starts as the planet is fully consumed. Seconds later from the window, Gregs sees Jupiter Station consumed by the growing stellar blaze of some cosmic bomb, set off within Jupiter, and feels the searing heat and force as it expands and catches his own ship within the forming gravity well. In his final moments, Gregs wonders why T'Ket would go so far as revenge like this, then remembers that she was always a little bit screw loose and fanatical, what was another planet to T'Ket's revenge?

Crushing the glass in his hand and spilling its contents onto the Ten Forwards floor, Gregs is sweating in fear as suddenly Zinuzee and Ace is besides him. Zinuzee quickly calls for a medic as Ace tries to force open Gregs enclosed fist, trying to get him to respond, and notices his eyes are dilated. It would be some time before he would be alright, but Zinuzee assured him that he would get through this, that whatever was happening they could get through together, their ship, their family, that everything would be alright.

 _1 Month, 2 Weeks, 4 Days, 6 Hours, 49 Seconds later_

 _Elba II Temporal-Psychosis Wing_

He can't sleep anymore. The scars burn him at night, with their venom coursing through his blood every second of the day, until the orderlies sedate him, giving him hours of dreamless fakery with no relief as every second after he wakes once more, is spent in constant agony until the cycle begins again. Nevermore would he time travel, never again would he sail among the stars in wonder, only with disgust and loathing would he view the inky darkness above his head, only in anger would he ever view another starship or the Federation the same. His reckless actions brought him here, his flaunting of power dragged him down, his presence as a captain of note only made him a target by those who used time as a weapon.

He would no longer doubt her though, the only kindness in this new, miserable existence he called life. She was out there looking, searching for a cure, while others fought petty battles over honor or greed, and the need for power and control.

The hallucinations that had brought him here had long since passed, he could control them now, mostly. If only that control didn't cost him this infernal pain wracking through his body every second of every day, not enough to cause himself harm, but enough to drive him slowly mad. He cursed Q, the Caretaker, T'Ket, the Sha-Ka-Ree entity; just about any God or deity he could remember from the academy courses in xeno-history, for letting this no-win scenario occur.

He had a choice. He could live with the hallucinations, the terror of watching ships erupt in fiery novas, explosions engulfing other ships and laying waste to planets, to see his friends die alone in the cold darkness of space or become puppets to any number of enemies the Federation had ever made. Or he could live in constant and concise unbelievable agony, fighting between the pain at waking to another dawn, or struggling to let his mind rest enough to sleep at night, without resulting in becoming catatonic by the sheer mental and physical stress forced upon him. His rampant bouts of telepathy, uncontrolled without daily practice or serious meditation and coherent creative outlets, had nearly cause him to break everything around him at first, from straining the minds of his guards, to telekinetic acts of destroyed furniture, and ending up with hard strained telepathic suppressants overloading.

And today his control just slipped out of his grasp.

It had happened when Nathaniel, Drake as he liked to be called now, chose to visit him. He was an old roommate who had become a Captain of his very own, from a student on the tactical track of the academy, who had been picked by Taggart in the test run as his 'Number One'. Gregs had lost touch over the intervening years after he himself had graduated, but he knew Nathaniel had only just graduated from the Academy when he showed initiative and quick-thinking after the death of Taggart, which ended with him being fast-tracked when he showed up at all the right places; including the discovery of the Solanae Dyson Sphere, not to mention their paths crossing in the Delta Quadrant, and more recently the events of the battle for Sol. His friends history was shrouded, or murky at best, and completely sidetracked at worst, leaving a hazy picture for how he would view his old buddy. Heck, their first encounter was him intimidating Drake with a blunted replica knife, not that he knew... Of course it hadn't helped he had been attacked on Vulcan the week or two prior, and he was jumpy with strangers.

Surprising to say, it was hard for him to believe he could take time off of his schedule to visit him in the correctional facility, though Gregs felt nothing but concern from him, which was odd. "Nathaniel, quite a pleasure and a surprise to see you here," Gregs says in one of his more lucid moments, the pain eased enough for him to converse.

"Quite, old chap," he responds, "But I'm glad to know you haven't gone all skin and bones on us, while you are in here, what would your fiancée say to that?" This piqued Gregs interest, as he had known that whatever he and she were now, it hadn't gone beyond his crew and his family, and most of his crew was a part of his family. "But, I'll be honest Gregs I'm not here for you, I'm here for myself," Drake says, and this is where Gregs rolls his eyes, waiting for him to boast or some other such thing, "I'm sorry to see you end up like this, but with what I know, that the pain you've been feeling is worth it, that you will need it to endure what is coming for you." Gregs head snaps up to focus on Drake, rapt attention on this suspicious new attitude of Nathaniel's; who seemed to know what even the facility had black listed in his own files. "Do they burn, the scars I mean, where the venom courses through your nervous system?" Nathaniel asks, "When I was bit I thought I was about to die, but I had an immunity they didn't know about; it didn't affect me like when He bit you."

"Always the show off, ehh power boy?" a new voice responds from Gregs right, "Always 'energy powers this', 'immunity that'; wouldn't work if you didn't have that damn crystal of yours as a security blanket." Gregs turns to see a version of him, similar garb, same looks, same scars, meditating in a lotus position. "Well, are you going to respond to him or not?" This other Gregs asks, turning to look straight in his own eyes, "The man can't see me, only you can." Gregs pales, but turns to look at Nathaniel, who suddenly is wearing a black robe and flashing glowing eyes of blue on a face hidden by shadows. Yelping in surprise, Gregs blinks and finds Drake in his black and red, very much regular, Odyssey attire.

"Had a flash of clarity, eh?" Drake says, "Don't worry, I understand the temporal mumbo-jumbo, even if your meditating friend over there thinks I can't see him."

"You can see me?" Other Gregs says nonchalantly.

"You can see him?" Gregs says with his eyes widened in disbelief, some form of acknowledgement finally given to this phantom apparition.

"Of course I can, that's why I'm wearing this," he says bringing up a chained necklace, holding a orange and blue crystal on its end, "It's not just a bauble, even though it's energy is spent, there's always a little naturally left in my very being, a fingerprint stamped into my timeline, if you will." The Other Gregs merely stands up and walks through the force field, circling Nathaniel, before returning to a new position on the open bed.

"Very well, I suppose you might as well help me explain to him what is going on, until we get the others awoken as he has," the Other Gregs says, "I guess you and I are tied too tightly, even in death, aren't we?" Suddenly, as if his visitors shadow came to substance, the robed figure is back, replacing Drake with this shadowy stranger.

"The crystal ties us to this spot, a fixed point where you and I counterbalance each other, a fact some say destiny, I call meddling," the shadow-being says, "They tie our fates to this wretched prison, and they seek once again to keep you from following your path; though this time we shall once again defy destiny." Shadow-Nathaniel moves through the force field as if it wasn't there, and as Gregs figures, he has just be experiencing another vision and never had Drake as a visitor. At this the shadow man turns to both Gregs.

"I am at my limits of interference now, being here, I choose to become a Mender, not a god; not anymore at least," the shadow says, focusing on Gregs, "I'm just another echo now, oh I'm from the same timeline he comes from, my counterpart that is somewhere out among your stars, playing a starship captain, but he is flesh and substance, and I am just another one of your 'hallucinations' after all."

"What is happening to me, who are you _really, what_ are you?" Gregs asks, before turning to his own double, "And you, what is your purpose; are you just to torture me for my failings, that I couldn't stop these visions anymore?" At that, both Other Gregs and shadow-Nathaniel look at each other, and burst out with a hearty laugh.

"No, Gregory," Nathaniel replies, "We are here to teach you how to ignore the pain, by accepting these visions until you can block them out, and you WILL learn to block them out... like background noise." Then the Other Gregs chose this time to speak.

"I was framed in my timeline, you never were because of my interference, so you didn't have to suffer a lifetime of correction for being... accidentally, blamed for the murder of an Undine agent disguised as a Bajoran," Other Gregs says, "I won't stand to see your life wasted, your potential rotted out by some vengeful ghost from your future; besides with me as your teacher, I'm just to stubborn to die because I 'altered' the timeline, and I was an Aegis agent!" Gregs looks at both of them, before groaning in defeat.

/ _Two Weeks, Three Hours, Six Minutes, Twelve Seconds Later_

He blocked the visions out, the pain having ended once he stopped struggling to suppress them, denying them access had been counterproductive anyways, as he had seen both good and bad possibilities come from these new visions. He had also begun to learn that this Drake was quite different than the one he had met in another universe, the one he also knew as his original roommate.

"Tell me, Drake, how did he come to be here, what happened to your original self?" Gregs decides to ask this man.

Drake looks at him for a moment, before smiling. "Very well, the version you knew- He ended up dying, killed in an attack on Iconia, when the Sphere Builders began their siege against the-" he stops, taking in Gregs puzzled look, "Right, alternate universe, alternate circumstances, meaning unnecessary complications like- you know what, I'll just let you find out if you survive this." He pauses, breathes in, and then resumes his story.

"Originally, I was a scientist that wanted to explore the multiverse, so I took a peek at my worlds greatest extra-dimensional knowledge, copying the tech my own 'verse used, and discreetly built an equivalently functioning device using my crystal here," he says tapping at an object hidden underneath his cowl, "As a power source." Holding up his necklace, Gregs sees a hint of light in the translucent object.

"In the end, it seemed I had just hacked the crystal's natural functions, using my own timeline's potential as a base, and just managed to stretch out further sideways than any portal had ever gone; the version you knew was a rubber band having been stretched to its limits and ending up back exactly where it had started when it snapped," he says, "Except I was about to get a bloody wake up call because of my interference, I had caused a ripple in the multiverse that some nut job took advantage of, and ended up dragging a few nasty surprises with me in the form of an Undine ship into my timeline." He sighs, the shadows melting away and revealing the human man in Starfleet attire beneath him.

"My irresponsibility replaced an event of disastrous proportions in my local timeline, a localized meteor strike, with one that nearly ended with half the eastern seaboard feeling the sting of Undine weaponry," Nathaniel says, "They were apparently directed from a time before the Undine stopped hostilities with us, probably accidental time travel some of my enemies hijacked to send against me; a coming storm your universe may very well be coming into the view of, but I reversed the event before it ever happened, and here I am now, no second chances or quantum duplicates just flesh and bone in one, and energy as a remnant of the real me." Trailing off, he realizes what he is saying, then checks the time to see it nearly ten in the evening, by local standards. "Right, well, we don't have much left to teach you, you have enough control to use your disadvantage to your benefit, and where you are going, you'll learn fast..." Nathaniel says.

"Wait, do you know what's coming next?" Gregs asks, "I mean, I know you had to have a reason to come by, does that mean you didn't come here by chance, Drake? Answer me!" Walking toward him, Drake crosses his arms and stares at Gregs.

"I have one final thing to teach you; one last thing you will need to learn," Drake says, "How to use your visions of alternate timelines to make sure you don't make the same mistakes; I ended a world in one of my parallel timelines, and if you can use this power to prevent something like that happening to you, then by the Well, I will help you learn." Grabbing his crystal and removing it from its chain, he puts it to Gregs hands, the item becoming semi-solid in his grasp, before shining brightly and causing Gregs to blackout.

\\\ _Somewhere_

Waking up with a gasp, Gregs sees he's on a shuttle, one of a 23rd Century design. _U.S.S. Cambridge_ from the plaque hanging discreetly to one side. Walking towards the pilot's seats, Gregs stops as he sees a massive monolithic spire, like an wedge or a pin into the planet, with a massive sphere seemingly floating in a cloud of massive energy bolts, which seem to channel up and down the machine. Then he noticed that there seemed to be massive ionic disturbances being pulled toward it- No, they were moving, the shuttle positioning itself closer and over the massive sphere which was just bigger than the shuttle from that view, even as far away from it as they were.

Gregs had ignored everything in favor of the technological marvel before him, when he notices a familiar fiery redhead driving the shuttle. "Hazari?" he says aloud, though the woman seems to ignore him, and continues inputting commands into her ships controls. Suddenly a spike of energy nearly hits the shuttle, as the Starfleet officer finishes inputting a command into the shuttles weapons, and discharging a bolt of energy into the spire. In a whirl the shuttle is angled to the sky, as clouds of ionic energy suddenly dissipate in an orange haze, revealing a clear night sky and stars blanketing the dark backdrop of space, until that began to be drowned out by another light.

Looking down, Gregs sees the floor beneath him glow a fluorescent-orange, as if the metal was being superheated. Looking over to the human captain, Gregs sees her crying, and reaches out to grasp her. "I can't stand to see you die like this, Hazel, I can't see you being one to die in a blaze of glory," Gregs says, putting his hand on her shoulder, "You should be doing what you love, studying this technology, not-" Suddenly she glows blue as he touches her, and pulling his hand back, as if he had been burned. In an instant she was gone, the shuttle empty and currently melting away, layers stripped by the assault of energy tearing it away molecule by molecule, until the orange burned his eyes, and he had to shut them, as the color consumed his view and burned through his eyelids.

\\\ _Elba II_

When Gregs awoke, he noticed the melted metal around him, as well as the deactivated force field, though that may have had to do with the piles of slag metal that used to be the projectors. Looking over himself, Gregs sees an arc of orange energy spark between his fingers, before dissipating in a numbing sensation. Looking around for his teachers, he only sees an empty and melted room.

Suddenly three armed guards appear in full gear, and point their weapons at the unarmed alien. "Gregs Sharvan Son'aire, remove whatever weapon you used and submit yourself for inspect and intermediate holding in Deep Isolation," a guard says, Gregs immediately complying, though the crystal had disappeared. Immediately they grab him, handcuff him, and inject him with a sedative.

When next he wakes, he's in a different cell, the lights are off for the night cycle, and it seems much quieter wherever he has ended up. "Well, that was quite unexpected," Other Gregs says from his position against one of the cells walls, "An ion storm folded with tetryon energy appeared around you, seemed you became a channel rather than just an observer... maybe your 'situation' has something to do with it?" Tapping the luminescent bite mark on his own hand, Gregs looks to see the faint remnant of energy seemingly coursing through his blood. "I think you're a radiation magnet Gregs, and whatever that energy is, cut through time and space to your former cell," Other Gregs continues, "I think you ended up absorbing some of the energy you were viewing in that alternate timeline, and if he hadn't took the brunt of it with the crystal..."

"Nathaniel?" Gregs says, "What happened to him!" Other Gregs looks sadly at his counterpart.

"I'm sorry, when he realized what was happening, he took it upon himself to drain the crystal, he absorbed the energy of the ion storm through it, and burned himself out saving your life," he says, "He gave me some more time myself, but since we're in a different room, and since I never imprinted myself here, I'm starting to fade fast..."

"You're dying too?" Gregs says, saddened by this.

"Never, I just don't have a connection as easily without the crystal now, I only came about because that room you were in?" he says, "I was held in that room for thirty years, and the temporal nature of that crystal brought my timeline into sync within your fringe of views a-and n-now, I-I-I t-think i-it's us-ed up-" Fading away, Gregs is left alone, and for once, he was quite saddened."

\\\ _Present, Risa_

"I had seen her die in an Ion Storm, her body had to have been burned to ash because of that, and I had gotten close enough that the tetryon energy making up half of the storm, caused me to channel a little bit of that reality into out own," he says, "She had got struck by the energy storm because it was attracted to the crystal Nathaniel had given me, but I don't think anyone could have known it would do that."

"I remember something similar," Zinuzee replies, "I had something a bit more.. personal, and I think its time I told you." She turns him around and faces him. "Remember Vorrik?" she says, "He helped me figure out what was wrong with you, but we found out the hard way how bad your affliction was..."

\\\ _Some Months Earlier_

"Tell me, why would you come to us?" the Voth male asks the Trill woman, "Had you set up the proper channels, I'm sure you could have met with someone else, like Daniels or Walker, who could have helped you with this..." The Trill woman chuckles ruefully in response.

"We both know their version of the future is much less malleable than from the view of someone like you," Zinuzee says, "Besides, I figured someone like you would understand why I am doing something like this; to save my future while I still have one, while he can still be saved." The Voth snorts, but takes the medical files the woman hands him. "This is the most detailed scan we took of him before he left us for Elba II, Ten managed to make notations of oddities in his brain chemistry and physiology," she says, "He figured uptime medical knowledge would have more understanding, and I agree."

"Yes, well I believe this will be a start, but I'll need more," the Voth says, "I'll send a probe into Elba II, so I can get an updated scan to compare, I might even steal a few seconds of his to do some non invasive scans..." Suddenly the ships Temporal Transporter is surrounded by a force field, Zinuzee and the Voth Captain turn to it, as a body materializes inside. Suddenly warning lights flash, and medical screens turn red as they detect failure in the transporters systems. "Temporal Transporter is failing, materialization in current timeline unfeasible, switching to failsafe, diverting timeline to new branch, and creating temporal duplicate... Now!" The Voth says, as they watch materialization take effect.

In a haze of energy, Gregs Son'aire materializes and looks to see Zinuzee, and he smiles, then sees the black skinned Voth standing next to her in a Wells uniform, causing confusion to pass over his face. Suddenly, as if struck from some unseen weapon, Gregs falls to his knees in pain, pupils dilating, and Zinuzee rushing to his side behind the force field. His left hand keeps his body propped up, while his eyes seem to glaze over. The Trill woman puts her hand to Haines through the force field, and she watches him in his agony, unable to do anything for him.

She watches as his skin seems to lose color, and the veins in his left arm, going up to his face and reaching his left temple, turn black and bulging. In that instant he closes his eyes and falls limp, Zinuzee crying out in horror as his skin turn ashen and he seems to dry up into a husk before her eyes. At that moment the transporters reactivate, and the body is removed.

"I-I'm sorry you had to see that," Vorrik says, "I did not expect that to happen, I couldn't believe anything would have the power to cause that." He looks to the medical screens, and sighs. "Except I do know who did this, and I know how, I just don't know where and when they did this, or why they targeted him," Vorrik says, "There is one more test I can run to confirm my suspicions, but I can't do that with another duplicate; we'll have to retrieve him from Elba II itself, we'll have to test him and find the people who did this to him, but we can only do it if I run this test on his real-time self." Nodding, and wiping tears away, Zinuzee gets up and straightens herself out. "How will we do this?" She asks.

 _Azure Nebula_

 _U.S.S. Forra Geggen_

 _Six Days Later_

"Now, let's see what's going on," Vorrik says, "Especially since it seems that the Terran's were bold enough to come here, right before our meet up." The Voth leads Gregs to a medical station, and has him stand, as a force field is set up around him. Turning the machine on, the Voth watches the various health monitors and readouts that seem to be going onscreen. "Tell me Gregs, besides these 'visions' have you had any other odd occurrences, like radiation sickness, or feelings of events happening again, or even temporal duplicates from seconds in your future, cropping up?" he asks the man in the test chamber, "I ask, only because the nature of this sickness is not temporal psychosis, but rather an obtuse form of radiation poisoning from an unusual, and frankly quite rare, energy source, and you should be suffering ill effects."

"No, nothing at all besides the hallucinations, not since I gained some control over them..." Gregs responds, "There was an event where I- I viewed an alternate reality that was experiencing an Ion Storm where I was, and somehow it- it melted my room when I returned..." Nodding, the Voth begins typing something in his computer, when a soft whine of an energy discharge is heard being released into the chamber Gregs was held in. In the next moment Gregs is on the floor unconscious, and Zinuzee is taking him from the chamber, as Vorrik opens it to allow her to do so. The Voth quickly kneels down next to the Trill woman, and scans the man with a compact device, focusing on the head.

"Just as I thought..." he says, getting up and connecting the device to his computer, before returning to help her pick the alien Captain up from the floor, "Please, let me help you sit him somewhere comfortably.." Setting him up on the nearest bed, the Voth quickly returns to his results, an angry Trill at his heels.

"What was that?" Zinuzee asks, "You just hit him with an energy discharge like it was nothing, and you aren't even going to check if he is alright?" The Voth snorts, but doesn't look up from his work.

"No worries, little Trill, that wouldn't have even phased him if-" the Voth stops, his face turning grim, and muttering, before turning to look Zinuzee frankly in the eyes, "I had hoped his outlook was much more positive but..." He brings up a 3d model in hologram, and shows it to the Trill. "This is what his brain scan should look like, base levels we extracted from previous exams, but this," Vorrik says, pulling apart the scan, and creating not one, but three whole new brain scans, "This is currently what his brain is experiencing." The Trill notices all three brain scans have the same three areas highlighted: The cerebral cortex, the cerebellum, and the basal ganglia, all focused around his temporal lobe.

"What is it, what does it mean?" she asks, "I don't understand, why does there appear to be three different brain scans all showing the same result?"

"They aren't three brain scans, miss, they are just one, just his," Vorrik says, "Or at least they should be, except they aren't, this is the result of a failed quantum superposition." The Voth slams his hand onto his desk. "I'm sorry, your fiancé is sick because someone didn't account, or didn't know, about the radiation poisoning," the Voth says, "If we could find the Krenim who did this, they are probably a part of the T.L.F. or Cult of Ophidian, but they could also be a rogue agent looking for revenge..."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, what do you mean 'find the Krenim who did this'?" she asks, "How do you know a Krenim did this, the Krenim are our allies!" The Voth looks at her, and thinks to himself, trying to comprise his next words carefully.

"This- is true now, but not ever Krenim in every reality are our friends," he says carefully, "There are groups of Krenim, some friendly, some hostile, some neutral, and some just insane, out there in the time stream, hiding in plain sight, and one of them, for good or ill, caused a superposition on Gregs." The Voth taps his leathery hand on the console. "They probably took him in transit from your time in Iconia's past, it is not hard to redirect time travelers and then try to superimpose them onto their past selves, my people have done so before..." the Voth says, "Except I also noticed why those three parts of the brain scans are highlighted; they were exposed to triolic radiation directly, and transmitted through the blood/brain barrier, because the irradiated poison used to kill him. was injected directly into his blood."

"Killed him?" she replies, "If he was killed, how is he alive, how is he here, how did he get triolic radiation poisoning?" The Voth, pulls something up, and the vicious snake-like creature appears, one Zinuzee had become familiar with in the past year. "One of the Devidian's creatures?" she says bewildered.

"We've begun to nickname them Ophidian's, due to their 'temporal' nature as a species in symbiosis with the Devidian population," the Voth says, "These creatures are quite unique when exposed to triolic radiation in our phase of reality, these creatures become physical and need to consume neural energy to store and survive their physical existence, usually completely draining their victim without even having to touch them, but they can also bite their victims..."

"Let me guess, they secrete some form of poison from their fangs that are supposed to immobilize their victims?" Zinuzee replies. The Voth nods.

"Normally their hunger is so overwhelming it is impossible to stop them from fully draining their victims either way, though when they are stopped, it leaves some trace residue of triolic radiation in the victims neural pathways," Vorrik says, "It's actually some form of chemical tag, meant so the creature can find their victim in their reality and finish their feeding, no matter where or when their victim was first bitten." The Trill woman looks at the holograhic representation.

"So he's been marked for feeding?" she replies, "Isn't their someway to dissipate or even inoculate him from being found?" The Voth shakes his head negatively, before bringing back the brain scans.

"When they are marked it's as if one, single second of their life is killed and... imprinted on the living victim; it's as if two beings were growing up next each other, a Schrödinger's cat that was just above the temporal foam that separates realities, and just below normal scanning range," Vorrik says, "And it normally wouldn't be a problem, since most victims go on leading a full life up until their death, when the 'Ourboros' strikes and steals what nourishment it can from the accumulated time of the 'dead', stolen time taken form the living victim, and stored within that one 'second', like interest in a bank."

"And the snake just skims off the top, when it knows its prey is weak and ready to be fed upon," she concludes, "But why does this present a problem with Gregs?" The Voth brings up the third and first scan.

"This brain pattern is the failed superposition, where someone tried to put Gregs back together, without anyone the wiser; except that someone else had decided to make sure he was a victim of an Ouroboros, and the two clashed in a previously unknown, and never before seen way," Vorrik says, "Instead of Schrödinger's cat, we now have three states of superimposed material: Alive, Dead, and In-between." Overlaying all three brainwave patterns, a pattern is seen in neural impulses the Voth highlights from his scans. "Instead of being fed into one 'second', his mind is being split between something both dead and alive; his thoughts are literally shifting between a dead timeline and the temporal foam between realities, which is why he's experiencing hallucinations," Vorrik continues, "Combined with fact of his being a telepath, he's suffering from a new form of Temporal 'Psychosis', if we should even call it that, except somehow he's managed to take control of it, limit his exposure."

"He's able to control the tap on the sonic shower," Zinuzee conjectures, "Instead of just having it on full power with no safeties because of a power surge, he's managed to reengage safeties and control how powerful it is?" Nodding the Voth closes the panel.

"Let's just hope we can find way to cut him off," Vorrik says, "Or he may end up dying if we can't find some way to bring him together."

\\\ _Risa, Present_

"And here you are now, free of the mark, whole and here with me, your friends and family somewhere in this resort, ready to accept you and me, us, for what we are, ever since we returned," Zinuzee says, "No more ghosts, no more apparitions, no more Beings or deities trying to kill and/or save you from their past selves, just you, and me, us together." She pulls him in for another kiss, before moving back into the resort room, and pulling down the shades.

Gregs lingers for a moment, watching the sky redden and brighten the sky. "So why do I feel like it isn't over yet?" he says to no one in particular, "Not yet, and maybe never." Shaking off the feeling, Gregs trails after his wife, and closes the door behind him.


End file.
